If the X event queue is empty, XtAppNextEvent flushes the X output buffers of each Display in the
application context and waits for an event while looking at the other input sources, timeout timeout
values, and signal handlers and calling any callback procedures triggered by them. This wait time can be
used for background processing (see Section 7.8).
If there is an event in the queue, XtAppPeekEvent fills in the event and returns a nonzero value. If no
X input is on the queue, XtAppPeekEvent flushes the output buffer and blocks until input is available
(possibly calling some timeout callbacks in the process). If the input is an event, XtAppPeekEvent fills
in the event and returns a nonzero value. Otherwise, the input is for an alternate input source, and
XtAppPeekEvent returns zero.
The XtAppPending function returns a nonzero value if there are events pending from the X server, timer
pending, or other input sources pending. The value returned is a bit mask that is the OR of XtIMXEvent,
XtIMTimer, XtIMAlternateInput, and XtIMSignal (see XtAppProcessEvent). If there are no events pending,
XtAppPending flushes the output buffer and returns zero.
The XtAppProcessEvent function processes one timer, alternate input, signal source, or X event. If there
is nothing of the appropriate type to process, XtAppProcessEvent blocks until there is. If there is more
than one type of thing available to process, it is undefined which will get processed. Usually, this
procedure is not called by client applications (see XtAppMainLoop). XtAppProcessEvent processes timer
events by calling any appropriate timer callbacks, alternate input by calling any appropriate alternate
input callbacks, signal source by calling any appropriate signal callbacks, and X events by calling
XtDispatchEvent.
When an X event is received, it is passed to XtDispatchEvent, which calls the appropriate event handlers
and passes them the widget, the event, and client-specific data registered with each procedure. If there
are no handlers for that event registered, the event is ignored and the dispatcher simply returns. The
order in which the handlers are called is undefined.
The XtDispatchEvent function sends those events to the event handler functions that have been previously
registered with the dispatch routine. XtDispatchEvent returns True if it dispatched the event to some
handler and False if it found no handler to dispatch the event to. The most common use of
XtDispatchEvent is to dispatch events acquired with the XtAppNextEvent procedure. However, it also can
be used to dispatch user-constructed events. XtDispatchEvent also is responsible for implementing the
grab semantics for XtAddGrab.
The XtAppMainLoop function processes events using XtAppProcessEvent, varying the mask parameter and using
XtAppPending to ensure that it has a chance to handle events of all types, i.e., X events, timer events,
input events and signal sources. This constitutes the main loop of X Toolkit applications, and, as such,
it does not return unless XtAppSetExitFlag is called. Applications are expected to exit in response to
some user action. There is nothing special about XtAppMainLoop; it is simply an loop that processes
events until XtAppGetExitFlag() returns true.
Applications can provide their own version of this loop, which tests some global termination flag or
tests that the number of top-level widgets is larger than zero before circling back for the next event.